Tom Cruise Up for The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Having already redefined the modern perception of one 1960’s spy series with his ongoing Mission: Impossible films, leading man Tom Cruise is said to be interested in visiting Del Floria’s Tailor Shop, playing Napoleon Solo in the big screen version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.. Deadline reports that Cruise is likely to sign on for the Guy Ritchie film.

Steven Soderbergh was originally planning to direct the feature, based on the original NBC television series that starred Robert Vaughn as Solo and David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin. They were agents of United Network Command for Law Enforcement (U.N.C.L.E.) who fight the forces of Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity (T.H.R.U.S.H.).

In a recent interview with ComingSoon.net, screenwriter Scott Z. Burns talked about setting the film in the 1960’s.

“I thought it would be really fun to go back and look at spycraft in the Cold War and what you could and couldn’t do,” he said. “When you think about the world in the 1960’s just in terms of cars and fashion and the aesthetic, to be able to go and shoot that world with today’s cameras and today’s technology, I think we could do some really cool stuff. Then also, the thing that was so cool about ‘U.N.C.L.E.’ that people don’t realize–and this is why I like it more than ‘Mission: Impossible’–the initial conceit of ‘U.N.C.L.E.’ was amazing. It was really about an organization that didn’t have an affiliation with a country and Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin were guys who should’ve been sworn enemies. One was Russian and one was American and they worked together. In that way, it was a really incredibly progressive, hopeful kind of show.”